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In the first quarter of 2010, we created a 4-phased Cloud Storage Maturity Model which still makes complete sense in 2012. The market is finding the way forward, following the blueprint we described almost to a T.

With our cloud storage maturity model in mind, here are some thoughts on the trends we're seeing this year. What we're describing is the State of Cloud Storage in 2012:

• The rise of a new application delivery architecture

We think this year everyone will figure out that cloud storage is not just cheap storage via the web, but the delivery of a new application architecture, whereby applications are fully contained on a variety of devices (smartphones, tablets and PCs) and the backend is a cloud data store with REST APIs. 

• The consumerization of everything

Enterprises as well as large institutions will seek alternatives to allowing their employees to use consumer tools like DropBox as well as alternatives to tools like box that still store data (albeit encrypted) in a public cloud (i.e. Amazon S3). This trend, aptly named the "consumerization of IT" is creating many alternatives that provide more security, and integration with key corporate support tools.  Cloud Storage is a key enabler of the consumer tools that have found favor with early and wide adoption, so look for the successful entrants with enterprise class security to be based on cloud technologies, and stored behind private firewalls so that the solutions will be as attractive to end users as the consumer tools, but that IT can control the security of their confidential corporate data and compliance initiatives.

• Disintermediation of services
  

The disintermediation of telcos and device manufacturers will continue, with the most cogent example being Apple delivering text messaging "off network" via iCloud.   Already, with devices using WiFi, from multiple suppliers, a storage cloud is a key enabler of these services.

• Manageability

Storage cloud manageability will grow as a requirement as the storage clouds get larger.  Storage clouds will become a delivery vehicle for highly complex management schemes focused on storage tiering. Let's talk ITIL in the Cloud.

Ladies and gentlemen, fellow citizens of the Cloud, the enterprise is ready for cloud storage. Let us know what you think.

Let's discuss the rapid adoption of "App Stores", and the types of applications that are being enabled for a variety of devices, primarily tablets and smartphones. While these applications are each written to deliver unique capabilities and take advantage of the platform they are designed for, as well as being written for different platforms (for example, Android apps are developed in JAVA, Apple IOS apps in Objective C) they share a common enabling technology: REST API access to a storage cloud.  

This approach is rapidly enabling new applications, which differ from older approaches like client server, virtual desktop and Web browser enabled applications in very important ways.  The backend infrastructure ( a REST API storage cloud) is a simple, massively scalable server-based solution, that can reside within the enterprise data center (a private cloud), or at an IT Service Provider (either a hosted private cloud or a public cloud). It is easy to scale, easy to manage, and by providing a consistent storage backend, it allows developers to focus on their applications and associated business logic versus worrying about the backend architecture. This provides for a "separation of concerns" in that Web, Windows, MAC, Android or IOS applications can be substantially different, but they all use the same REST API of the storage cloud they depend on. As your application use and portfolio grows, you simply scale the storage cloud, versus having to make significant changes to the server infrastructure, as is the case with client server, virtual desktop or Web browser enabled applications.

The disruptive wave is coming fast, and you will see it bringing new capabilities and applications for that large screen in your automobile (watch for car makers offering applications in App Stores), a touch screen on your refrigerator, as well as enterprise applications that will support tablets and smart phones.  Think about estimating at a job site with an application on a tablet, or estimating a property insurance damage claim with a tablet, the application is on the tablet, and the data could reside in multiple storage clouds.

Expect to see more enterprise applications taking advantage of this low cost, and easy way to deliver the kind of applications their employees and partners need.

Enterprises are increasingly looking to on-premise private storage clouds as a cost-effective way to share information.  Why?  A cloud behind the firewall enables users to easily access, share and collaborate without compromising data security, integrity and availability.  But there are still a few points every enterprise needs to consider before making the decision.

1. Consider your security needs.  How private is a private cloud?  How confidential is the data that you may ultimately store in the cloud?  Do you want the cloud behind your firewall, and if so, how will you access it?  Will you open a port and depend on a user id and password for access control, or will you also require that your cloud is accessed via a VPN?  Remember, today an employee can decide to email a confidential file to someone outside of the firewall, so what do you really accomplish with a "private cloud"?  If the cloud is available thru a port, can you monitor the cloud and shut it down when (not if) it comes under attack?  If the data being stored cannot be compromised then it cannot be on a network, at all.
   
   
2. Make sure you have adequate internal resources.  Do you have the scale, expertise and data center space to host your own private storage cloud and will you save money versus public, multi tenant storage clouds?  Assuming that your analysis of number (1) above suggests that a private cloud is a desirable approach, then our experience is that you can host your own cloud for an identified operational cost that is at least as low as the public provider.  Now, if it forces you to accelerate capital consumption in order to build out a data center, it may be a poor decision.  But all those sorts of things being equal, you can do it.  The intangible costs, like unanticipated headaches, dilution of focus on your scarce resources, and or a poor choice of cloud infrastructure can quickly turn a winner into a loser.
   
   
3. Identify a use case before starting.  A common mistake that we see is the extraordinary focus on the technology as opposed to a focus on your cloud storage use case and the business case that surrounds the use case.  The project should start with an analysis of the use case and its resulting impact on the business, and operate on the assumption you can source a cloud of appropriate size, scalability and costs.
   
   
4. Research technology solutions that are most appropriate for your use case. When you take the use case approach, you will quickly understand that a private cloud is not just a storage infrastructure; but rather an ecosystem of cloud storage clients, backup and archive solutions, special purpose data movers, management and support, that, when combined with a cloud storage infrastructure gives you a complete solution.  Once again, a use case focus will flush this out, versus a platform technology led process.
   
   
5. Integrate cloud storage with your overall cloud computing strategy.  A storage cloud is simply one layer of a cloud computing stack.  How does this cloud fit within your cloud computing stack?  Does the way in which you integrate it support the other cloud computing decisions you have made?  Evaluation of the cloud storage solution and how it will interact with, support and/or be the infrastructure associated with your overall computing cloud is a critical part of your overall evaluation.  You may also choose to use a service provider hosted "private cloud" to solve issues associated with your deployment, and not ever deploy the storage part of a compute cloud within your own data center.   

And finally, you may want to check out our FREE TOOLKIT >>
CLOUD STORAGE: A BUSINESS MODEL for THE ENTERPRISE

Dan Decasper co-founded Cirtas with the vision of enabling the enterprise to utilize cloud storage as if it were a local array.

CloudStorageStrategy.com asked him a few questions about "Cloud Storage Controllers" and what the technology means for the enterprise. 

Note: Cirtas is a Mezeo Ready Solution Partner.

What was the original idea behind Cirtas?
Cirtas' co-founders previously built a WAN optimization company that was acquired by Citrix.  Together, they saw the coming of the cloud and recognized that broad scale adoption of cloud storage would require a "catalyst" technology to make the experience seamless and high performing.  They had the expertise to develop such technology and founded Cirtas to address the market need.

What is a Cloud Storage Controller?
A Cloud Storage Controller (CSC) is analogous to the array controllers found in enterprise storage systems, except instead of providing data protection, security, advanced virtualization features, and performance for an array of locally attached disk drives, a Cloud Storage Controller provides these capabilities on top of public cloud storage.  The net result is that public cloud storage can be utilized by the enterprise as if it were a local storage array - quickly, easily and for any application.

Who uses them Cloud Storage Controllers? Why do they need them?
Cloud Storage Controllers are used by mid-to-large enterprise - typically organizations with 10TB to several petabytes of data that are looking to reduce their overall cost of storage and simplify their storage environment.

These types of customers need Cloud Storage Controllers because leveraging public cloud storage services is simply not feasible without them.  The sheer number of applications running in a typical enterprise precludes them from being re-written to cloud APIs, and other concerns such as security and performance must be overcome.  Cloud Storage Controllers address all these concerns in a very robust way, allowing cloud storage to be used like local storage - but with superior economics and simplicity.

What benefits does a CSC offer?
A Cloud Storage Controller offers three main benefits:

1) It creates a seamless and highly robust connection to cloud storage, while requiring no changes to applications running in the data center.  Applications are able to access the cloud using standard block and file access protocols on what appears to be a standard logical volume.  The magic of the Cloud Storage Controller is in presenting a standard storage interface to servers and applications on the SAN, while connecting to the cloud over the WAN, and requiring nothing of the user to make this happen.

2) It accelerates the performance of applications using cloud storage through advanced WAN acceleration techniques including caching, deduplication, compression, and protocol optimization.  These techniques make cloud storage perform like local storage - even over relatively limited Internet connections (e.g. a DS3 at 45Mbps).  Furthermore, these same techniques help customers reduce their cloud storage service fees (and total cost of ownership) since they are not storing as much data in the cloud or moving as much data back and forth to it.

3) The Cloud Storage Controller provides the same features and capabilities expected of local storage arrays, such as thin provisioning, automated storage tiering, volume management, snapshots, and more.  These capabilities enhance the native functionality of the cloud, making it easier to use and providing superior data protection capabilities.

What applications/data sets make sense for the cloud?
Any Tier 2 or Tier 3 application or data set makes sense for the cloud through a Cloud Storage Controller.  The applications that don't yet make sense are highly mission critical or performance sensitive applications like large databases, ERP systems, and data warehousing.  Applications that make perfect sense are home directories, unstructured content storage, SAN offload, archiving, backup/tape replacement, and large-scale data collection (e.g. log storage)

What are your impressions of the cloud storage market today, and where it's going?  
It's an exciting time to be in the cloud storage market.  There's so much potential and things are just getting going.  Cloud storage has been very successful for web applications, and in conjunction with cloud computing.  However, it hasn't yet transcended into a tool for the mainstream enterprise.  At Cirtas we've got an opportunity to change that and we're seeing tremendous traction.  When we started two years ago, IT managers were aware of the cloud, but were fairly uneducated about it.  Today there are increasing numbers of cloud storage initiatives being driven from the CIO level, along with much more recognition of the technology among the media and analyst community as a potential game changer.  So these days it's much easier to engage with customers.  Keep an eye on the statistics published by cloud storage providers - you'll be amazed at the growth rates you see them achieve.

Our Enterprise Cloud Storage ROI Model identifies the key enterprise business drivers for cloud storage, and provides a model that helps organizations quantitatively evaluate if implementing a private storage cloud is the best option for them.

The ROI model and paper may be downloaded here >>

In addition to reducing the cost of storage, the Enterprise Cloud Storage ROI Model examines other areas of opportunity, including:

• in-house backup
• thin provisioning
• risk management
• productivity gains
• the ability to manage large file transmissions
• workstation storage upgrades and
  
• sharing information versus emailing information

The good news is that implementing a private storage cloud can provide cost savings while maintaining control behind the firewall. This ROI model helps you evaluate multiple use case options so that you can make the right decision for your organization.

Download the Enterprise Cloud Storage ROI Model >>

On July 19, 2010, Rackspace led the announcement of OpenStack, with a goal of creating an open source cloud software solution for use on industry-standard hardware.  The initial releases contemplate solutions for both cloud compute and object storage.  While these are the first two releases, they are separate offerings.  Remember, cloud storage is not just the storage target for cloud computing, it is one potential storage target for cloud computing, and is in and of itself a stand alone cloud offering of programmable storage.

Now, I have purposely used a term from the clothing industry, "off the rack", to spend a moment looking at a framework for evaluating the opportunities this may present.  With dress shirts, you can buy off the rack, semi custom, or custom, each with a unique value proposition based on fit, choice and cost.   Interestingly enough, this may be a good lens through which to consider the possibilities of OpenStack, and in particular, OpenStack Object Storage.

Rackspace has made no secret of its motivations for leading this initiative, and its desire to focus on "fanatical" service as it's key differentiator versus the fundamental technology on which the service is based.  Fair enough, and so the question becomes, is the rapidly emerging and immature cloud marketplace already "mature" enough to seek homeostasis?  (Homeostasis is the property of a system, either open or closed, that regulates its internal environment and tends to maintain a stable, constant condition.)  Have enough models and innovations, from startups, academia, open source movements and large tech companies, been tested in the marketplace to the extent that we can already race to the common denominator?  Perhaps now is a good time to start, as long as you are willing to acknowledge that the desired results are a good ways off.

Before we jump off into "Off the Rack" software, a quick look back at open source is helpful.  For more reading on the open source software industry a good introduction is The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Six things are particularly interesting: 

1. An open source alternative can emerge as a follow on to a successful commercial technology and can become pervasive versus the commercial offerings it succeeded (LINUX versus UNIX is the reference case here).
   
2. A second result of this approach can also end up with a big success, although in more of a niche than a pervasive replace for the earlier commercial offerings (MySQL versus Oracle, IBM and Microsoft in the relational data base space).  
   
3. An open source effort can also emerge earlier in a technology cycle and come of age as a pervasive solution (Apache Web Server comes to mind here).
   
4. Open source generally requires very careful cultivation of the community of developers, with active interest by academia (and partnering with NASA is part of the formula here).  Commercially sponsored open source efforts are becoming more common, although it as of yet has not been proven as the typical "breeding ground" for most great open source successes.  Eucalyptus, with its roots at University of California Santa Barbara, seems to be a more traditional route.
   
5. Open source is not necessarily reflective of rapid commercial opportunities for success.  Eucalyptus is obviously beginning to maneuver towards a repeat of the commercialization model.  OpenStack is taking the approach most favored by other open source successes like Apache.  A couple of good reads here are this article from BusinessWeek and this. See also Derrick Harris' post over at GigaOm.
   
6. There are also hundreds of thousands of open source projects that had mixed success or languished altogether. A quick look at  SourceForge (an open source project hosting site) shows nearly a quarter million hosted projects. How many of these have languished or had little impact on the market.
   

So, the first issue is that there will exist for some time to come a real question as to the adoption potential of OpenStack.   I believe that adoption is driven by applicability to need.  In a moment we will address a serious issue which OpenStack Object Storage must overcome to be successful, at best, and at worst, will confine it to a niche market.  My views are very much directed at the Object Storage offering, versus the compute offering, which I believe exists in a different space and as a different type of solution.  With this backdrop, let's have a look at the cloud storage marketplace today, and use the analogy of off the rack, semi custom and custom:

• Off the Rack:  implement as is, one size fits all, each with unique approaches for performance, scalability, bit integrity, may or may not provide geo services.
• Semi Custom:  Select from storage types (DAS, SAN, NAS, JBOD), shared or distributed file systems and object systems, mix and match storage for different SLA and cost/usage patterns on the same infrastructure, multiple APIs, meta data and catalog abstracted from storage layer, geo services.
• Custom:  Generally a service only offering and not available as deployable infrastructure, specifics will vary widely based on service provider offering strategy.
  

Infrastructure	Type	Comments
Eucalyptus	Off the Rack	Limited S3 APIs
OpenStack	Off the Rack	CloudFiles APIs
Scality	Off the Rack	S3 APIs
Mezeo	Semi Custom	Mezeo Cloud Storage Platform API and Interoperability API
NetApp	Off the Rack	Bycast APIs, NetApp storage
EMC Atmos	Off the Rack	Atmos ReST APIs, EMC storage
Service	Type	Comments
Amazon S3	Custom	S3 APIs
Microsoft Azure	Custom	Windows centric
Rackspace	Off the Rack	Is the basis for OpenStack
Nirvanix	Custom	SOAP APIs, multi node
Google	Custom	Offers S3 APIs
AT&T Synaptic	Off the Rack	Based on EMC Atmos
OpSource, SoftLayer, Layered Tech and others	Custom	Based on Mezeo

As you can see from the summary above, there exist as many views of what constitutes either a cloud storage service or a desirable cloud storage deployable infrastructure as there are service providers and vendors.  Note that a semi custom infrastructure results in a "custom" service as implemented.  "Off the rack" results in very similar services by those who utilize the same infrastructure unless they make their own major additions.  Any offering can be differentiated by service, and the degree and quality of service is critical to customer satisfaction and plays a strong role in value creation.

The OpenStack announcement as it regards Object Store and its approach to cloud storage seems to view cloud storage infrastructure as highly akin to an operating system (or at least a "hypervisor") and more similar to a selection of LINUX or Windows than that of an application or middleware layer.  While I agree that cloud compute is very close to this model, cloud storage is a service oriented architecture, with programmability for new applications that can tolerate Internet latency because of Web Services (like ReST APIs). The industry constantly overlooks this key point as it is consumed with the low cost, pay for use and thin provisioning capabilities of this storage tier.  Solutions for thin provisioning and low cost have been available far longer than cloud storage. Further, pay for use is more of a business decision than a technology. 

In the earliest days of cloud storage, there existed initial confusion that cloud storage was defined by cost, scalability, pay for use, and thin provisioning only and not programmable access (usually via ReST APIs).  ParaScale paid a huge price for not understanding that cloud storage requires Web services (like ReST API) access.  Now, with OpenStack Object Store, we see a follow on case of this same perspective, but with basic APIs for Put, Get and List.   Yes, it provides for Internet access via ReST APIs, but the focus continues to be primarily cost based versus new application enablement based.  It could be argued that the open source approach will provide for the appropriate additions of "advanced services" to be added.  However, even the use of the platform by NASA is more focused on cost of storage than on advanced functionality because NASA stores much more data than almost any institution or enterprise in the world.

I think Savio Rodrigues states this view very well in his post:

"Select products based on business needs, not license alone: It's also interesting to note that very few enterprises are in NASA's position with regards to size of IT investment and skills in-house. While NASA engineers were ready and willing to contribute new features into the Eucalyptus open source community, few companies have the skills or governance to consider allowing their developers to contribute to open source projects.  Summary trend number 7 from the 2010 Eclipse survey results highlighted this issue.

To suggest that NASA's buying or IT decision making patterns represents much more than the top 1 percent of IT buyers would be a stretch."

The overwhelming majority of enterprises would rather pay a vendor to deliver, maintain, support and enhance their private cloud software infrastructure than place that burden on internal IT staff. Whether the enterprise is paying for a closed source commercial product, a commercial product based on an open core product, or a subscription to an open source product, the product selection decision will be made based on business requirements much broader than 'is the product open source or not?' "

Keep in mind that cloud storage is a stand alone service associated with application delivery over the Internet and also associated with low cost, pay for use, scalable storage resources.  Social media applications and many Web based applications exploit these capabilities; for example publishing a file to a URL and significant tagging of files.

This view of cloud storage as nothing more than cost and volume-based ignores its extraordinary importance as a service-oriented architecture for new application enablement.  I believe both views are equally important and need to be equally served.  Will OpenStack, with its pervasive cost focus, be able to drive its community to this additional view of needed contributions of advanced services for cloud storage?  Lydia Leong of Gartner Group provides an interesting view of the open source community issues associated with this in her post:

"At the same time, open sourcing is not necessarily a way to software success. Rackspace has a whole host of new challenges that it will have to meet. First, it must ensure that the roadmap of the new project aligns sufficiently with its own needs, since it has decided that it will use the project's public codebase for its own service. Second, it now has to manage and just as importantly, lead, an open-source community, getting useful commits from outside contributors and managing the commit process. (Rackspace and NASA have formed a board for governance of the project, on which they have multiple seats but are in the minority.) Third, as with all such things, there are potential code-quality issues, the impact of which become significantly magnified when running operations at massive scale."

One last comment on this business of vendor lock in and cloud storage APIs (another focus of the OpenStack announcement).  I would submit that while a specific set of APIs has the potential to create vendor lock in, this is a much smaller problem than what is experienced in other technologies.  If you are really worried about it, you probably have never actually written a ReST API call.  It is written in many languages, and we have seen cases where applications that run on S3 run unchanged on Mezeo.  Others need very minor modifications, and still others are excited to take advantage of some of the unique Mezeo services.  It just is not a problem, and this is much more related to FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) and marketing zealotry than it is associated with technological reality.  The APIs of choice will shake out, and it is far too early to say if it will be S3, OpenStack, CDMI or a combination of all of these, and others, as yet unforeseen. 

At Mezeo, we have never believed there will be one winner, and instead focused on architecture to enable easy and effective delivery of whichever APIs stand the test of time. The Mezeo Cloud Storage Platform API enables advanced services and programmatic access to Mezeo enabled storage clouds.   The Mezeo Interoperability API enables seamless interoperability of applications developed for Amazon S3, Google and Eucalyptus based storage clouds.

The interesting view that seems to be missing here is that marketplace competition by service providers already serves to drive down the price of cloud storage, so a commoditized stack embraced by most is unlikely to yield extraordinary incremental savings.  At the same time, while the competitive market conspires to drive cloud storage costs ever lower, the need to differentiate, and deliver solutions as well as a programmable storage to enable multiple new and exciting types of applications will rapidly replace the pure cost and scale focus of current cloud storage offerings.  Sometimes, the "new" application is simply enabling it in the cloud, to produce the same result at a lower cost!  This requires significant cloud storage functionality in order to make this easy and productive.  Amazon continues to prove this with their many additions and capabilities which differentiate their service.  Mezeo sees much the same view on the part of our customers.  The focus is on what cloud storage can do, what problems will it solve, what business opportunities does it create, what new applications can it enable and all of these views assume it will be competitively priced.

Cloud storage represents significant opportunities for institutions, the enterprise (see my recent post on the business case for enterprise cloud storage) and for the IT service provider.  Cloud storage is substantially different from cloud compute, and requires that you understand this difference in order to effectively evaluate the impact of this announcement, as well as your next steps.

There is no doubt that every enterprise has devoted some time and energy to evaluating how cloud technologies can best be put to work in their ongoing pursuit of cost reduction and to a lesser extent for potential improved service levels particularly around rapid provisioning of compute and storage resources.  Mezeo has recently begun to work with various enterprises, and I want to share some of the opportunities that appear to align strongly with these two goals.

In terms of cost, most enterprises are experiencing continued and significant growth in unstructured data.  As they look at the cost of this growth, it is more than just physical storage, data center occupancy, bandwidth utilization and power and the accompanying management demands; it is also the backup and disaster recovery requirements and the ability to quickly satisfy users who need more storage in order to execute whatever tasks and jobs they have.  Against this backdrop, the drumbeat of Amazon S3 and other public storage clouds advertises storage at costs that are generally below the internal "advertised" cost of the typical Fortune 500 company.  What gives?

First, cents/GB/month is only the tip of the iceberg, and bandwidth along with access charges gives a more realistic cost appraisal.  Next, real and legitimate concerns about data security exist (will someone gain unauthorized access, by accident or via an attack, to company data stored in a multi-tenant public storage cloud?).  Also, data integrity concerns are well founded (will the bits I store be returned, and will they be backed up and appropriate DR measures taken?).  Finally, can I absolutely trust the service provider to execute to the extent deemed necessary, and if they do, can they really save me any real money versus the assumed risk profile?  Private cloud computing is an appropriate strategy for addressing these issues.  

Not all unstructured data is a candidate for the latency of cloud storage as delivered from an IT service provider via the Internet.  So, while some tiers of data may be appropriate for a cloud storage service, it is a subset of the enterprise unstructured data requirement and not a lower cost panacea.  Hopefully, CIOs can easily make this case with their peers in senior management, although it may sometimes seem like they are making an excuse for keeping control and not exploiting new technologies.

Question one surrounds the cost proposition, and our analysis suggests that, even at sub petabyte initial cloud sizes, the enterprise can deliver economics for in-house cloud storage that compare very favorably.  In fact, it may even be lower than what is available from a service provider.  The Mezeo team comes from both a hosting and a cloud storage background, and this just reinforces our view that the cost proposition for private cloud storage has favorable economics.  However, if you are being forced to allocate capital for data center build outs, or you are otherwise CAPEX constrained, the hosted public cloud economics can be quite appealing.  Since businesses require positive margins, this further drives up the cost of cloud storage as hosted at a public service provider.

The case for improved user satisfaction is similar, regardless of public versus private, because the cloud gives users the capabilities they want.  First, with rapid provisioning of pay-as-you-go low cost cloud storage, the end user gets what they need when they need it via a frictionless interface.   Second, several benefits drive end user demand for cloud storage; including: avoidance of workstation storage upgrades, one solution for file sharing and collaboration, new capabilities and applications that exploit file search, tagging and publishing to a public URL, and the ability to access your storage anytime, anywhere and on any device.  Third, the solution is also ideal for implementing a workstation backup solution with sync.  It is not hard to see why end users would find all of these capabilities appealing.

Cloud storage clients, gateways and edge devices are also beginning to appear, and can solve many different issues.  For example, a client gives the end user access to multiple cloud storage accounts at multiple providers.  Why not replace that tape backup operation at a remote location with an iSCSI interface directly to a storage cloud, for a scheduled backup without local user intervention (get rid of the tape backup of your local file server, forever)?  Speaking of file servers, multiple solutions for replacing or even displacing file servers are coming to the market.  The savings from removing an entire layer of infrastructure are quite compelling.

New applications, including use of social media, may require file publishing.  Cloud storage allows you to store training videos, and make them easily available at every end user in the company.  Tagging and search offers new application capabilities, and new opportunities to support existing compliance requirements.  Secure file sharing, versus file publishing, may be a significant requirement as you work with customers and business partners.  Partner, customer and employee portals can reach new levels of capability with API accessible cloud storage, as the availability and the management of information is delivered via the cloud.

Our observation is that the early adopters have begun the move to cloud storage.  Why?  Simply, enterprise private cloud storage allows you to gain many of the benefits and set aside the security and data integrity concerns of public cloud storage.  At the same time, data tiering and private and public could solutions will drive "hybrid" cloud approaches that will allow the enterprise to exploit the best of both worlds.  In an upcoming post, we will offer up some tools to examine the cost and the benefits of cloud storage for the enterprise. 

Cloud Storage Strategy interviewed Gladinet co-founder Jerry Huang on cloud desktops, cloud gateways, and his company's business model. 

[NOTE: Gladinet is a customer of Mezeo Software.]

Cloud Storage Strategy recently interviewed Layered Tech CEO Jack Finlayson on the economic benefits of cloud computing, the downturn, and virtual private data centers for the enterprise. 

NOTE: Layered Tech is a customer of Mezeo Software, the underwriter of this blog. 

Layered Tech has obviously focused on building a trusted infrastructure for customers.  How do you sustain that trust level?

As customer requirements and expectations continue to change, we've evolved in order to handle more detailed and complex requirements. We continually evaluate every aspect of our IT infrastructure and network to ensure we have the appropriate resiliencies and protections in place. We also take pride in our culture of continuous improvement in all aspects of customer service; it's the best way we can support our customers.

This is why we're here - to manage our customers' infrastructure so they can concentrate on their business.  From the beginning, it's all about providing superior levels of customer support. When we begin a new customer relationship, we learn the customer's specific business needs and provide counsel on the best infrastructure solution to best support those needs and meet overall business goals. 

This is how we've built our reputation as a trusted provider with our customers around the globe, and our customers know they can count on Layered Tech for the highest quality infrastructure solutions and service.  With seven top tier data centers on three continents, we deliver secure, scalable and ultra-reliable solutions for IT infrastructure that support even the most complex enterprise requirements. 

We also maintain relationships with leading technology partners and keep up with our extensive certifications to ensure that we have the resources and expertise to deliver the best in managed dedicated hosting, cloud computing services and cloud-based storage.

Has the economic downturn helped accelerate the migration to cloud based data centers? 

Absolutely. The economic downturn has forced almost everyone to do more with less, which is why more companies are turning to cloud computing. 

Increased scalability and flexibility and a pay-per-use model creates a more cost-effective and agile infrastructure solution.  Customers leveraging Layered Tech's cloud computing and virtualization solutions reduce capital and operating expenses while enabling IT staff to focus on higher priority business needs rather than their infrastructure. 

Customers can also choose from a range of support options from Layered Tech's tiered managed services, ranging from the highest root-level access down to the lowest self-managed option with varying levels in between.  It's all about helping them to be flexible and do more with less.

Can you explain what the Virtual Private Data Centers (VPDC) platform service is?  Is this a flavor of the cloud computing model that people have been talking about?

Sure. We pioneered Virtual Private Data Centers - or VPDCs - which offer enterprise-class security, choice and flexibility.  It's a hybrid approach that gives customers dedicated, unshared resources in their off-premise cloud infrastructure rather than placing their data into purely public clouds.  VPDC platforms and private clouds are becoming popular cloud computing approaches for enterprises because they provide more control and security than public cloud offerings.

Whether it's an "internal private cloud" created and maintained by the enterprise's IT staff and housed within its onsite data center, or it's an "external private cloud," where the enterprise engages with a third-party hosting provider like Layered Tech to develop and operate a private cloud within one or more of the hosting company's data centers, enterprises want to have their own cloud infrastructure.  In other words, we believe that enterprises will not want clouds with shared resources, like those that exist in purely public cloud environments.

So, with the VPDC, customers gain the on-demand scalability of the cloud with all the reliability and security of dedicated servers.  The integrated virtualization platform also offers levels of managed services, security and flexibility via a proprietary API that were previously unavailable in an integrated offering. 


We created a maturity model for cloud storage just a few weeks ago. Can you tell us if it matches with your experience in the industries you serve?

Yes, it does. We believe that 2010 will be the first meaningful stage of cloud computing's rocket-ride of growth and enterprise usage, and it's all fueled by the need for further operational and financial improvement.  We've found that enterprises are seeking cloud computing benefits such as lower costs, higher productivity, greater speed to market, and near-instantaneous scalability of computing resources. 

It's important to note that CIOs now have an easier time showing their CEOs and CFOs the value of migrating to cloud computing and virtualized environments, especially considering the competitive advantages they create. The investment required to migrate to the cloud alone generates immediate short-term value, while also delivering long-term upside.  

Like your cloud storage maturity model, we think that custom migration plans and hybrid approaches to cloud computing also will be an emerging trend in 2010.  Enterprises will evaluate business drivers and align technology solutions to their corporate needs more closely than ever before.  The result will be the growing adoption of a hybrid approach, where a portion of the IT infrastructure stays in the physical, dedicated server world, while the remainder migrates into the cloud.

Finally, can you tell our readers about LT Depot, your cloud storage solution?

As you know, we just launched our new cloud storage solution called LT Depot, which is powered by the Mezeo™ Cloud Storage Platform.

LT Depot allows you to create and select scalable, reliable, and secure storage for your application and service needs. If you need storage for images, videos or critical documents without significant capital expense, LT Depot is your answer.

Not only is LT Depot designed as a robust and reliable storage avenue, it provides customers the extended advantages of sharing and collaboration. This provides features such as access, create, manage, and edit documents and files no matter where your users reside -- even from their mobile devices. Whether your team exists in one office, or multi-site locations around the world, stay connected and work together seamlessly and efficiently.

Cloud storage is already showing signs of Phase Two (see our post on the cloud storage maturity model), as a new set of solutions arrive in the marketplace.  These solutions are referred to as cloud gateways, on ramps, cloud clients, edge devices and other exotic names. 

For ease of discussion, lets use "cloud client" to describe a solution that is on a single user device (workstation, PDA, Tablet) and "cloud gateway" or just "gateway" for a solution that is delivered on a server or router for many users.  Whether they are a client or a gateway, some store a "blob" of data, and some store "chunks" of data that are parts of the original object.  Others store the actual object.  What's the difference and is it important? Should you consider it in your cloud gateway use plans?

What is a blob?  A blob can start as either a single object or a collection of objects, for example, all of the files on a single server, or a VM image.  Then, you do something to it in the client/gateway device that requires it to be brought back through the original client/gateway to be returned to a useful state.  Examples include de-duplication and compression followed by encryption prior to transmission of the object to the cloud (I call this D/C/E).  The result is a "blob" of data, an object that is minimized in size, and must be retrieved by the application that created it in order to be useful again. 

A chunk is part of an object, and the original object must be re-assembled by the gateway that parsed it in the first place. Some gateways store blobs.  Some store the object in chunks.  Finally, some store the actual object with its original file type, intact.  These may be workstation clients, or interface solutions that allow for a CIFS or iSCSI (today, TwinStrata is an example of the iSCSI capability) attached device to store in the cloud.  There are trade-offs and advantages associated with each approach, and your cloud storage use case and objective must be carefully analyzed in order to determine the applicability of the gateway to your business requirement.

Now, let's consider D/C/E.  This provides savings in addition to the savings associated with cloud storage.  D and C gives you a small object size, so your bandwidth cost is lower, and your overall storage cost is lower.  When there is a change to the stored objects, chunks allow you to send only the changed part of the object, reducing bandwidth and potentially improving performance.  Encrypting, or chunking, or both, may improve security and relieve you of the costs and management associated with other security approaches.

So, blobs and chunks sound pretty good, providing better security and lower costs.  What's the catch?  First, storage clouds are great places to provide anytime and anywhere access to your data, from multiple devices.  If you have to go back to a gateway to get the original version of the object, that flexibility may be very limited or non-existent.  Clouds are also a great place for sharing and collaboration, which is not in play if the object in the cloud is not in a useful form.  Finally, vendors are not giving gateway solutions away - we must ask what they cost, and are they worth it?

As usual, the answer is, it depends.  What services can I get from the cloud? And what services can I get from the gateway?

An example that is getting a lot of attention is file server replacement, or even better, file server displacement.  I get less excited about replacing a file server with another server that is a policy driven cache, because I still have this layer of technology in place.  However, if you can displace most of your file servers, then the potential for significant cost savings become obvious.  

I tend to look at single user clients as very interesting on ramps to the cloud.  A client, using some modest amount of workstation storage as a cache, can deliver most of the benefits of a file server.  Companies like Gladinet, SMEStorage, GoodReader, Mezeo and others have very interesting cloud clients.  You will still need a few file servers if you need to provide a place for very large files.  Interestingly enough, those very large files are often rich media (like training videos), and streaming them to a reader on the client from the cloud is often good enough.  Another cloud client capability we expect to see will allow the end-user to store files and move them across multiple storage providers - from private to public and vice-versa, for example.  This functionality could also be in a server-based gateway.

Another cloud client capability might include giving encryption capability to the end user, and let them decide if they want to encrypt the file themselves.   Or, use a cloud that provides user selectable encryption.  Give your end users or customers the power of choice, the freedom of access anytime and anywhere, the ability to get the amount of storage they need when they need it (what Gartner calls "reservationless", and kudos for them, great term).  Don't tie users to a "home base" gateway that does not store their object in it's original format, or at least give them a choice.  All that being said, we are seeing that some mix of clients for file server displacement, and file server replacement gateways may ultimately be the appropriate solution.  

Backup and archive is a different story, and here a gateway can make a lot of sense.  First, there is quite a bit of local housekeeping associated with these solutions, and the solution can decide if utilizing the cloud for some or all of the files makes sense. Speed of restore is a major consideration for a backup, and may drive local versus cloud based storage solutions.  Further, the need for a disaster recovery site, or to archive, can often be a cloud use case.  Companies like Zmanda and CommVault are very active in cloud based backup solutions.  What if you have applications that do not speak REST APIs, like a legacy backup solution?  There are gateways that can attach these legacy applications to the cloud, for example, TwinStrata.

Special purpose gateways can also solve an immediate problem.  Blue Thread offers a cloud storage interface for SharePoint.  The marketplace is rapidly developing a portfolio of cloud storage gateways and clients, as well as backup and archive solutions and all have their own unique perspective on cloud use.  Examples include StorSimple, Cirtas, Gladinet (who also makes clients), and EntropySoft.  Venture capital companies are deploying significant capital for these sorts of solutions.  Each of these solution providers sees a clear path to adding significant value to cloud storage solution delivery.

Cloud storage requires significant use case consideration to evaluate the functionality required, both in the cloud and in the gateway or client, and where the application or user can best exploit the functionality.  After all, cloud storage is also about empowering the end user with the storage they need, when they need it, at a favorable price, and providing advanced functionality, like publishing and sharing.

At Mezeo, we have both a deployable cloud infrastructure, and clients.  That causes us to look at where the best place to put the functionality is.  That creates a slightly different perspective, and we think it creates very useful products.  On the other hand, nothing gets us more excited than the thought of more solutions that drive cloud storage adoption and usefulness.  For this reason, we are rolling out a new marketing and certification program, Mezeo Ready™. 

With Mezeo Ready™, service provider public storage clouds can easily identify their offering as being "Ready" for use by Mezeo Ready™ clients or gateways, and backup and archive solutions.  Users of these products can pick one of many trusted service providers hosting Mezeo Ready™ cloud storage solutions.  This cloud storage on ramp and cloud storage provider "ecosystem" ultimately delivers valuable solutions to customers and is a big part of Mezeo's vision for the cloud storage market.

So, more to come on Mezeo Ready™, we are nearing the official announcement of the program, and will extend it to storage providers and file system providers who work with Mezeo to deliver storage clouds, both private and public.  Other solutions, like billing and provisioning systems will also be in the Mezeo Ready™ program.  The changes the cloud is delivering are new and useful, and deliver real value to the institutions and businesses that are embracing them.  The ecosystem is critical to the value delivery chain, and key to providing unique, desirable solutions.